Sunday, April 20, 2008

"What!" you say. You are now probably thinking that everything in New Hampshire is where it is supposed to be. Nothing is out of place.

Well, you are wrong.

Have you ever heard of places in New Hampshire called Panaway, or Nashville (not the one in Tennessee), Nutter, Fittsville, or Trecothick? How about Mittersill, Tunis, Rockywold, and Whitcherville?

I thought not.

All of these are names of places that ONCE existed in New Hampshire, and now have disappeared. A few places have lost all their inhabitants, but left the buildings, such as Gosport, on the Isles of Shoals.

Are these and other places in New Hampshire disappearing, similar to our cows--the ones that originally put the "Cow" in "Cow Hampshire." Where did they GO anyway?

In 1853 we had 94,277 milking cows, which increased to 115,036 in 1900. By 2002 this number had dropped to 17,467, and has dwindled lower since then.

Perhaps as the result of a power plant that will take manure from a dairy operation and turn it into "renewable" natural gas, the population of dairy cows will some day rise again.